Green and Clean Kitchen Sponges

To be honest, we never really gave much thought about our kitchen sponges nor what goes into making them. But we just recently realized while replacing our ragged old sponge that the odor fighting germ protection feature is formulated with a chemical additive we're trying to avoid: triclosan. That's the very same antibacterial additive that is contributing to the evolution of drug resistant bacteria that eat up antibiotics like it was an afternoon snack...

So what to do? A simple change is just avoiding sponges with germ-odor protection. There are natural kitchen sponges on the market, like Natural Value's scrubber sponge, which are made with 50% post-consumer recycled material and are even certified kosher if you want to go the eco-recycled route.

We're also considering switching to using a natural loofah sponge...maybe the larger natural shaped style used in the bath/shower, cut in half. The funny thing is we just saw the real vegetable this past weekend at the Alhambra farmer's market and purchased one for dinner without realizing its other use besides being a delicious veggie. Maybe the solution is to just grow our own sponges. That's as natural as they come!